


an anthology of a dead girl

by magisterequitum



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 23:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>her head's a jumbled mess of things lately. writing it down would help, only it's things she'd never have.</p><p>(an exploration of elena's headspace during S4 and post 4.09)</p>
            </blockquote>





	an anthology of a dead girl

_You used to write, you think. Spent hours a day putting ink on paper, wearing out the tips of your pens, black bleeding into your skin till the ends of your fingers had messy smears on them. You don't write that much anymore. Maybe because there's no one to read them like there used to be. Your father who would eagerly take them after closing down the office for the day, a break from his job; your mother after the stress from getting something ready for the next town event got to be too much; even your brother who liked to sometimes sketch out what you wrote when you could get him to sit still long enough. Maybe you just don't deserve an audience any more since they're all dead because of you._

_But if you did, this is what you'd do, you think:_

 

 

 

He sends her home. Sends her away. Her chest constricts, her mind a screaming mess, and something goes quiet. Something in her breaks for good and bursts through.

 

 

 

_You'd think it'd be an anthology, a loose collection of short stories. All of them would be intrinsically tied to the running theme of this one girl in a tiny little town in a rural Southern state where nothing bad ever happened or so people liked to say. You'd tell your readers about the wonderful home you had, filled with everything a good family would want or have. It'd be perfect and quaint, those kinds of adjectives, and you'd write about how your mother always fussed at your father for getting blood on his cuffs and how the house would smell like rosemary and thyme on Sundays for dinner. It'd be just lovely, on paper._

 

 

 

 

She doesn't stay at the Boarding House.

When Bonnie brings her home, when they pass the exit and see the 'Welcome to Mystic Falls' sign, that's the place she'd thought she'd go. All her stuff, like her toothbrush and shampoo, is there. There's an urge under her skin too that makes her want to wrap herself up in his sheets and never leave, something propelling her to do it.

She makes it into the door and into the foyer before she sees her two welcome home guests. There's books fallen from their shelves and chess pieces rolling under the furniture. The broken objects tell her what they know and what they don't know.

"Elena." Her name, the two syllables a surprise. As if they hadn't expected to see her, as if they don't know, as if they suddenly care about actually talking to her.

Her face contorts into a sneer, and she's shocked to find her fingers shaking at her sides. Tongue heavy, she swallows. It's almost better not to talk, to just be quiet. After all, she's been quiet for so long, letting everyone take and take and pull her until she's stretched limbs poured over hollow bones. She turns instead.

"I'm not staying here."

There's no one in the Gilbert house because there's no one there sleeping in the room connected to hers that wants to wake in the middle of the night and kill her. It's empty and desolate, and the air is too quiet, there's no noise and nothing wakes her because she can't sleep. There's no creaking of floorboards or the TV or the old hum of the A/C. There's nothing. It smells like nothing too.

 

 

 

_The first one you'd make about the house, setting it up because background and focus is important. You have to tell about the town. The second you'd make about love. Because who doesn't love a good love story. In small towns that's all you've got at times. You'd write about a girl who was sad and a little lonely and the boy who made her happy, the boy who was there and kind and had a nice smile that stretched to his eyes. The boy who held you so gently and who you traded kisses with all night long. The boy who made you feel something._

 

 

 

"How many more ways can you rip out my heart?" He asks as if he's on a stage, as if he's projecting to others instead of just her. She'd laugh, but she's too angry.

The arrogance of it makes her lash out and her hand moves without thinking. A balled up fist, just that way he'd taught her before he too died because of her, and there's the sweet satisfaction of breaking bones. His jaw or his nose, hopefully both.

Stefan crumples to the floor, a marionette with his strings cut. There's blood trickling from his lip and nose, and she wants to smear her fingers in and hit him again. "Elena," he tries.

She's getting really sick of her name lately.

"Shut up." That feels good. Really good. "Don't talk to me. Don't do anything for me. Leave me alone."

She thinks about the terror of the last few months, about the bridge she'd died on and nearly died on, and a car that won't stop. She thinks about her brother who's not here and has invisible marks on his arms that she can't protect him from. She thinks about the lies and the hurt and how both of them are better than this. She thinks and thinks and everything is fleeting, emotions slipping through her mind too fast for her to grasp onto just one, to the point where she's not sure if she's even here.

It's her turn to pretend to be on stage. Though her voice never rises in her monologue.

"I told you to let me go, Stefan. I told you to leave me alone if you couldn't handle me like this. I have to figure this out. And I'm done. We tried. I'm done."

He hasn't moved from the floor, maybe because she finally yelled at him or maybe because he knows.

"You can be mad at me. Just like I'm pretty mad at you, for a lot of things that we never talked about and a lot of things now." Stefan's face changes, looks a little wounded and like he wants to comfort her. She drives the final dagger home. "You talk to me again and I'll break more than your face."

 

 

 

_And then the next one would be about love again. A nice back to back combo. Love in its worst and best form, love that's more like a religion in its devotion and worship, love like how that person is the only one and everyone else doesn't matter at all. Love like how you should set it on fire and let it burn as you walk away. It'd be the one in the collection that's dark and twisted and maybe there'd be a metaphor about mirrored reflections in it._

 

 

 

Some days she wakes to find that she's put his clothes on. Slept in his black shirt and she doesn't remember how she put it on. She literally doesn't remember, that's not an expression, she just doesn't. Just like how she doesn't remember the days where the keys will just be in her hand and she'll be passing the exit out of Mystic Falls, car pointed towards where the lake house is. She always calls Bonnie then and let's her tell her stories about her favorite color and her favorite dinner her mother used to make when she wasn't buried in the cemetery.

Now her cellphone is in her hand and she's dialing the numbers without thinking:

"I hate you. I didn't ask you to be this nice person, and now you're suddenly being good. News flash, Damon, that's never why I ever wanted you."

"You hurt me just as bad. I was happy. You took that from me."

"I don't even know what I like anymore. You bleed everywhere here."

She was happy. She thinks. Or had she been.

 

 

 

_If you talk about love, you must talk about the other side of love, of friendships. In that quaint little town, you have three girls that make up a trio of giggling teenage girls. You shop on the weekends, you mock the teachers at the school, you plan sleepovers and sneak wine at the town events while your parents force you into stuffy dresses. You're three girls who link arms and swim in the hot water of the quarry and sneak out late at night._

 

 

 

"I was trying to help you."

"Do me a favor and don't."

"But, Elena,--"

They're both yelling, screaming in the middle of town and thankful no one is around to overhear them. Caroline's face is frozen in a mask of disbelief and hurt and shame.

"No, no, no, no!" Repetition may just be the key. "If you wanted to help me, you would have worked with me. Not against me. Not behind my back."

Her mind is split between being angry and being ashamed; ashamed at what she's not sure, whether it's what she's saying or that she let it get to this. She doesn't know. She can't label it. She can't label anything lately.

 

 

 

_There'd be one about the two girls that knew each other from birth. You'd tell how you two had always been close. How you traded stories of your first kisses and first times and all the times you'd been mad at your parents. How you'd played at being mermaids in the pool and witches in the forest. How you'd lost your tooth one summer and screamed at the blood, only to have her tell you it'd be all right. How you two had always planned to leave this town and go to school together, hand in hand, driving in the same car._

 

 

 

The house is too empty so she finds herself staying with Bonnie. They curl up on her bed and in some ways it's just like how it used to be, before all of this, before everyone died. It's better this way because Bonnie keeps her grounded. Her fingers close around her wrist when she reaches for keys to leave, when she hesitates over whether she really likes that book or that TV show or that flavor of ice cream. Her eyes never leave her face when she drinks, the veins rising to her skin. It's the closest the two of them have been for weeks.

"I'm sorry," she says one night, her back to Bonnie and her face to the wall. Her apology might be to the person in the room, but part of it's to everyone. There's something in that she's only saying it in the dark.

The sheets shuffle and Bonnie sleepily asks, her tongue slurred, "What?"

"I'm sorry for all of it. That Abby's gone, that Grams is dead, that you have to do all of this. I know it doesn't make it any better," her voice trails off. "But I'm sorry."

Her friend doesn't say anything, but her hand reaches over to link their fingers together.

 

 

 

_There'd be one that never made it in. You'd scribble down a few pages on two siblings that lost everything, that had everything stripped from them, and how they furiously grasped onto one another because they were all that was left. Somewhere in between the lines you'd tell how they left, or how they sent one another away, or how they burned it all to the ground. And then you'd tear it into pieces and throw it away._

 

 

 

She goes back to the house once.

The silence is oppressive this time, so much so that she reacts before she can think.

When she's done the floor is littered in broken glass, smashed picture frames, paint stripped from the walls, the vase her grandmother had given them one Christmas, busted mugs and plates.

The only room she leaves alone is the one connected to hers.

 

 

 

_You'd end it with something like the girls again. You've done the town, done the love, done the boys, done the family that no longer exists. You'd end with broken girls that show just how fake the town really is, just how horrible life and reality can be. You'd end with a list of the dead, all written in your blood. Maybe you'd end it with them never having existed at all._

 

 

 

She's in the driveway, laying down flat, the warmth from the sun lost after several hours have passed. There's the clicking of heels and then someone joins her. There's gold in her peripheral, but the scent of coconut lotion would have given it away.

"Can you believe that I almost felt bad for Klaus, for like two seconds?"

She's looking up at the stars, tracing the tiny wisps of cotton-like clouds that she can still see. "I tore my house up."

Caroline reaches over and takes her hand, pulling it up to slot their fingers together so they're linked. "Bonnie told me you're not so good."

"My mind's a mess. I don't even know if I like Italian food anymore or if that's just the person that's pulling the strings in my head."

Her thumb rubs against the side of her hand. A slow exhale.

"I'm sorry, Caroline. I've been not so great lately to you. To everyone. I shouldn't have said those things to you."

Caroline's teeth are shiny white where she turns her head to look at her. "I don't think either of us are getting the award for 'Best Friends' any time soon. I'm sorry too. I should have talked to you."

Silence lapses again. There's wind in the trees and a bird somewhere far off down the street.

"Did you really tear your house up?"

She laughs, and the noise bubbles up into the night air. It's the first time she's laughed and she's nearly forgotten how to. "Yeah, I really did."

Making a thoughtful humming noise, Caroline says, "Hmmm, well I guess your living room was due for a new color of paint."

They stare up at the sky, their hands linked.


End file.
